1.3. Why is Breathing while Swimming so Difficult?

When you’re not used to the regular rhythm of inhaling and exhaling, you might feel like you’re suffocating, and that’s completely normal.
Before I reveal why this happens to you, let me share some theory.
In swimming, the most important thing is to find a balance between the amount of inhalation and exhalation – you can’t have less of one and more of the other, otherwise you’ll gradually feel more and more suffocated.
The volume of air is similar to running. However – swimming has a few differences that make the learned stereotype not work.
The first problem is that we exhale into water, so the lungs push against resistance, which we don’t have to deal with in any other sport. It’s like trying to push something with your breath, and therefore if we just let our lungs “passively” exhale, they will never exhale as much as needed for swimming, leaving old, unexchanged air in the lungs.
And the second problem is that in swimming, our breathing is completely reversed compared to running.
When running, you inhale through your nose (inhalation) and exhale through your mouth (exhalation).
When swimming, you inhale through your mouth (inhalation), because if I inhaled through my nose, water droplets would get into my nose and sting my brain, and exhale through both – nose and mouth simultaneously (exhalation).
However, at slower speeds, during truly relaxed swimming, exhaling through just one of them is sufficient, either just through the nose or just through the mouth, because we’re not so out of breath. But at a faster pace, this wouldn’t be enough.
So once again – when swimming, inhale above water only through your mouth and exhale into the water through both nose and mouth simultaneously, actively pushing with force into the water to overcome its resistance.